The Formation of Christian Europe analyzes the Carolingians' efforts to form a Christian Empire with the organizing principle of the sacrament of baptism. Owen M. Phelan argues that baptism provided the foundation for this society, and offered a medium for the communication and the popularization of beliefs and ideas, through which the Carolingian Renewal established the vision of an imperium christianum in Europe. He analyzes how baptism unified... more...

Negative theology or apophasis--the idea that God is best identified in terms of what we cannot know about him, in terms of "absence", "otherness", "difference"--has been influentiual in modern Christian thought, resonating as it does with secular notions of absence, otherness and difference developed in recent continental philosophy. Leading Christian thinkers now offer a range of important new perspectives on this tradition, both historical and... more...

Winner of the John Nicholas Brown Prize presented by The Medieval Academy of America Sanctuary and Crime rethinks the history of sanctuary protections in the Western legal tradition. Until the sixteenth century, every major medieval legal tradition afforded protections to fugitive criminals who took sanctuary in churches. Sanctuary-seeking criminals might have been required to perform penance or go into exile, but they were guaranteed, at least in... more...

"This is your wake-up call! You may not have even realized you were sleep-walking. Most of us are most of the time. Awareness is an eye-opener. It's Anthony de Mello telling you gently but firmly, 'It's time to get up now.'" --Charles Osgood of "CBS Sunday Morning" and "The Osgood File" "Awareness will be the critical test of American business in the next decade. I call it the 'business of awareness.'" --F.X. Maguire, Hearth... more...

Two thousand years ago, Jesus walked across Galilee; everywhere he traveled he gained followers. His contemporaries are familiar historical figures: Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus, Herod the Great, Pontius Pilate. It was an era of oppression, when every man, woman, and child answered to the brutal rule of Rome. In this world, Jesus lived, and in this volatile political and historical context, Jesus died--and changed the world forever.... more...

Winner of the 2014 Mythopoeic Myth & Fantasy Studies Award At the heart of the mythology of the Anglo-Scandinavian-Germanic North is the evergreen Yggdrasil, the tree of life believed to hold up the skies and unite and separate three worlds: Asgard, high in the tree, where the gods dwelled in their great halls; Middlegard, where human beings lived; and the dark underground world of Hel, home to the monstrous goddess of death. With the advent of... more...

Herbert McCabe OP was one of the most intelligent Roman Catholic thinkers of the 20th century, whose writings have enjoyed enormous and welcome success. A significant influence on philosophers such as Anthony Kenny and Alasdair McIntyre, McCabe also counted amongst his friends Seamus Heaney and Terry Eagleton, and moved amongst the literary elite. His wide personal interests are reflected in his writings, which cover a broad range of... more...

The sensational story of the last two centuries of the papacy, its most influential pontiffs, troubling doctrines, and rise in global authority In 1799, the papacy was at rock bottom: The Papal States had been swept away and Rome seized by the revolutionary French armies. With cardinals scattered across Europe and the next papal election uncertain, even if Catholicism survived, it seemed the papacy was finished. In this... more...

Hunt examines the apparent paradox that Jesus' earthly existence and post resurrection appearances are experienced through consummately physical actions and attributes yet some ascetics within the Christian tradition appear to seek to deny the value of the human body, to find it deadening of spiritual life. Hunt considers why the Christian tradition as a whole has rarely managed more than an uneasy truce between the physical and the spiritual aspects... more...

The Roman Catholic Church has been in existence for two millennia and this institutional longevity is all the more remarkable given that a number of its leaders were, frankly, bad.